Motor skills are significant in virtually all human dynamic activity. Such skills involve not only spatial three dimensional perception, orientation, and control, but mental and occular skills and the coordination thereamong.
Modern educators, physical therapists, optometrists, and other specialists have recognized and isolated numerous aspects of these skills and the development and training of them.
These begin with such obvious functions as the recognition of numbers, letters, shapes, etc., and increasing speed of such recognition, central focusing of the eyes on the item of interest, and move to such functions as occular muscle development, peripheral awareness of the surroundings, training the eyes to cross the theoretical midline between the eyes and the like. Also, despite the fact the most individuals have a dominant eye, it is known that when focusing on one object in the periphery of the field of vision, the eye nearest the object becomes the lead eye and the other becomes the support eye. Thus, bilateral training of occular lead-support systems is advantageous, particularly to minimize excessive dependence on the dominant eye and better balance the occular functions.
Of course, it is universally known that most individuals have a dominant hand and it is similarly advantageous to force bilateral manual or motor training and development. This can be accomplished by requiring use of each hand individually. However, with both hands are needed for certain actions, the natural tendency is to use a dominant hand as the lead hand and the other as a support hand. It is often preferable or more efficient to use the reverse sequence, and thus bilateral manual lead-support system training is also advantageous. Specifically, if a person is right handed he or she will tend to always use the right hand as the lead hand and the left hand, if at all, as the support hand. Yet the location of activities to be performed may make it preferable to use the left hand as the lead hand.
Of course, the importance of eye-hand coordination has long been recognized, since this function ties together all the individual aspects of dynamic human activity.
Not to be overlooked are the related mental aspects that have also been isolated and must be developed. These include spatial orientation and perception, comprehension and judgment of oblique angles, a sence of directionality, mastery of sequencing and the building of self-confidence.
Much of ordinary human activity provides a continuing source of education and practice in such skills, but there exists a threshold question in acquiring, enhancing or in case of certain therapy, reacquiring, a minimal competence sufficient to enable the subject to initially exercise essential functions. Generally, the prior art has been directed at a particular aspect of these functions, such as recognition of size and shape, or the training of manual dexterity. For example, Patterson, U.S. Pat. No. 2,377,100 is directed at instruction of shape, size and geometrical form. Similarly, Welbourn, U.S. Pat. No. 3,479,751 is a manual dexterity training device.
There are also devices for teaching coordination or rhythm, as Kozak, U.S. Pat. No. 3,657,456 and devices to measure either movement of the human body for athletic purposes, Dealy, U.S. Pat. No. 3,766,538, or muscular reaction times, Reid, U.S. Pat. No. 1,729,227.
However, there seems to be little art in the realm of teaching occularmotor coordination. The only referencce specifically aimed at this point known to the applicant is a selectively illuminable toy, Barnard, U.S. Pat. No. 3,654,710, but Barnard lacks any means to force use of both hands, midline crossing with both hands and eyes, timing control, lead-support training of either hands or eyes, peripheral awareness spatial orientation and other features of the subject invention.